Posted
by
CmdrTacoon Monday June 21, 2010 @10:22AM
from the don't-hold-your-breath dept.

tekgoblin writes "Today Apple releases the much anticipated iOS 4 for iPhones and iPod Touches. No word on when we will see this update on the iPad." Can't wait to see all the neat new stuff that won't run on my stale phone.

Whine whine whine whine. It is getting old.Don't you think the users buying those phones are quite aware of that now. And it is not like we don't have proper alternatives by now.

I admit it is really scary that the average user just want computers and gadets that works together well without the need to have any technical knowledege at all, and for the average user, the limits are nothing compared to getting the average phone to sync properly with windows or navigating through the eel infested waters of the internet safely without getting vira etc.Even some HTC phones with android have been terrible with unstable windows drivers and I have spent more than one evening fixing other peoples computers, so that they could do something that should be Plug'n'Play 10 years ago(syncing their Hero phone with XP).

In my experience, the average user doesn't know what they want until they see something they like, and then they want it. This especially applies to computing products since so few understand what they are capable of, so imagining the possibilities isn't all that easy for them to do.

And no, the average person reading this post is not the same as the average user mentioned above.

As much as I try, friend, I cannot seem to feel this "freedom being lost", because I cannot make my ipad play WebM. I cannot make it play blu-ray disks either, which also seems to affect my feeling of "freedom" in no way whatsoever.And I gave up administering "real computers" ages ago in favor of a higher salary and a much more interesting job. What a high holy pain in the ass THAT was.

And lastly, I don't actually flaunt my ipad, because I live in the middle of New York City and I don't want it stolen. I

It's funny to see how Slashdot was was railing [slashdot.org] against MS about Trusted Computing, DRM and Palladium. Now Apple implements them in a shiny box and not only there's not a peep about the DRM in the iDevices but many Slashdot posters fawn all over and write long justifications about how it is good. I guess Trusted Computing was meant to come wrapped in a pretty box for the masses to not notice it. Now even MS is following in the same footsteps with Windows Phone 7 Series. Sad.

Are we visiting the same Slashdot? There is lots of outcry here about the DRM and walled garden that is the Apple mobile platform, just hang around in this story for another twenty minutes or so and you will see plenty of comments about it.

MS did take the music away, Sony took the Linux away, Amazon did take the books away and now Apple takes the software away.
Slashdot is wise enough to list all the evils for users to note.
Our last real freedom is Linux.

The difference is that most of Slashdot used to be united against MS but now it has basically split into two camps, Apple fans and FOSS fans. The Apple fans railed on MS and appeared to side with FOSS. not because they loved freedom, but because they loved Apple and MS was enemy number one. And the Apple fans have a lot of mod points and use them indiscriminately in the discussions both to mod up positive comments about Apple and to mod down any criticisms(legit or not) about Apple. This shows in every Apple story.

This is just my personal opinion, but there doesn't seem to have been as much Apple fanboism here as their used to be. Or FOSS fanboism. Or even anti-Microsoftism. The big evil one hasn't done anything big and evil in a while, and isn't nearly as relevant as they used to be. Linux passed from a meme into a tool, one that is stable and not terribly exciting. Like a hammer. And the diehard Apple fanbois seem to have evolved from worshiping at the feet of Jobs to admiring the hardware and complaining abo

This thread doesnt have a thousand posts yet. It will. The apple boys have been saving their moderation points. They will use them here, and not on the carbon nano-tube article, the health-care article, or the google-wave article.

Let's get a grip on reality here, people. First and foremost? This device is a CELLPHONE. Many, MANY cellphones have been made before the iPhone was released, and many more have been made since then which NEVER get a firmware update at all! You simply "get what you get" with them, often meaning even functionality the original manufacturer intended the phone to have is stripped out by your cellular carrier and their custom version of the firmware. (EG. Despite it supporting bluetooth data transfer, you *may* get blocked from copying over your own ringtone files from a computer -- or maybe you're disallowed from moving over your contact info as vcard files, or ??)

Yet along comes the iPhone, which by contrast, has an INCREDIBLE amount of flexibility, and people are screaming FASCIST?!

As phone handsets go, it's pretty empowering, I'd say. (And I say this as someone who used to own the original iPhone as well as a 3G, but now uses a Samsung Messager II phone instead of "drinking the kool-aid" and extending my AT&T contract out another 2 years just to get the latest iPhone.)

If Apple really was interested in stability, it'd a lot easier to swallow, but every time they update their licensing they put the lie to that sentiment.

Some people may not like it but a lot of the public seems not to mind at all, so far - because Apple has been careful about making user restrictions as invisible as possible.

Which is part of the danger, since its not just apps that Apple censors (at random), but apparently what gets sold in things like the book store (less random, which is worse). When the public is unaware that they're being censored, that makes the censorship all the more potent. I'm pretty anyone who'd want a book banned would salivate at the opportunity to ban a book to the point that most people don't know it even exists.

Let's get a grip on reality here, people. First and foremost? This device is a CELLPHONE. Many, MANY cellphones have been made before the iPhone was released, and many more have been made since then which NEVER get a firmware update at all! You simply "get what you get" with them, often meaning even functionality the original manufacturer intended the phone to have is stripped out by your cellular carrier and their custom version of the firmware. (EG. Despite it supporting bluetooth data transfer, you *may* get blocked from copying over your own ringtone files from a computer -- or maybe you're disallowed from moving over your contact info as vcard files, or ??)

Yet along comes the iPhone, which by contrast, has an INCREDIBLE amount of flexibility, and people are screaming FASCIST?!

As phone handsets go, it's pretty empowering, I'd say. (And I say this as someone who used to own the original iPhone as well as a 3G, but now uses a Samsung Messager II phone instead of "drinking the kool-aid" and extending my AT&T contract out another 2 years just to get the latest iPhone.)

If by "flexibility" you mean "you may buy the apps we approve, or the apps we approve, and only from our store so we get a cut" then yeah Apple's phones are just spiffy. So why was Google Voice blocked for such a long time again -- was that because of popular demand by the users? Why is it so hard to get a good solid backed-by-facts explanation for why a particular app is rejected from the App Store again (i.e., quote the exact section of the ToS or similar that it violates)? Nothing fascist to see here, please move along.

Look, here's the deal: if Apple wants to control the platform and the approve all the apps, and use nebulous/arbitrary criteria to reject apps for any length of time even against the express wishes of its users, then they open themselves up to being accused of being fascist control freaks worse than Microsoft. THEY open THEMSELVES up to that accusation, for it otherwise would hold no water. Got it?

The way you fanboys defend and stick up for companies who already have multimillion dollar marketing departments is just sick. Most major corporations engage in business practices that are in some way detrimental to the rest of us. Even your beloved object of fanboy worship does this and is not above doing this. Get over it and quit trying to shoot the messenger who points it out when your beef is with your beloved company.

Well, I think the point was that before the iPhone there really wasn't much of a sane market for cellphone apps. I totally agree with you on the walled garden crap, but the iPhone was still leaps and bounds ahead of most smart phones at the time. It's like bitching that your brand new shiny sports car doesn't have leather seats and they won't let you put in aftermarket leather seats without voiding the warranty while conveniently forgetting that you were driving a rusty pinto before.
Now that other devices are catching up it is putting pressure on Apple to play a little nicer and be less draconian. I don't expect an overnight change since big part of their success is that they can deliver a very simple and identical user experience across the board.
The worst part is, that if they just opened the gates for whatever app and a malicious app made it through they would be taking flak from the same people that howl about their strict control of the gate. You know, the same way Microsoft takes so much crap over shitty third party software crashing worse than a heroin addict in rehab.
Also, people that don't like them don't have to buy them. However, they seem compelled to go on at length about how that device is evil and doesn't actually meet the needs of the owner and that they know exactly what would meet those needs. You know...kinda the same crap that those companies pay their marketing departments to do. The only real difference is that the marketing company actually knows more about the competing product than what they read on the internet, and they have a vested interest in getting people to switch.

No, it's that Apple is NOT bad. They are good but not perfect. And everyone else was a HELL of a lot worse before they came along and I'm sure you weren't wrapping yourselves in the "freedom" flag back then.

All this crap has some legitimacy, but it is blown WAY out of proportion. Never mind that other companies were (and are) far worse, but these same idiots don't seem to be posting anything about them. The reason is some people just blindly hate Apple and this is their avenue to scream.

There is more then one point of view; there are reasoned arguments to be made on more then one side, and there are more then one objective criteria that matters can be judged on, and more then one principle that can be important to people.

Its tired. No one can be even vaguely positive towards anything Apple does without being dismissed as a "fanboy" -- even if you criticize something Apple does a breath after you praise another thing they've done. Hell, you can be only moderately-pro-Apple and then luxuriate praise on something Android does and yet if you point out even one flaw or weakness -- even if its purely objective -- and your entire point of view is immediately dismissed as a "fanboy". The *automatic* vitriol that a lot of Android supporters (Fandroids?:P) spew at anything even vaguely pro-Apple is absurd.

Grow up and drop the ad-hominem nonsense: if you need it to win an argument, you are just utter fail. Recognize there are *actual reasons* people *actually like* Apple products. Recognize there are *actual reasons* why people *actually do not like* Apple products.

Recognize that these reasons may be *different* for *different people*, and that it doesn't make anyone stupid, brainwashed, or some mindless cult without any sort of reason.

Wait a second. 'Flexibility' is a neutral term -- it can be either good or bad. Flexibility controlled by the end user is almost always good. Flexibility controlled by the producer can be good, but has a history of being used in less than benevolent ways, especially in the computer industry.

Flexibility, improperly implemented, can be just another way for a corporation to screw over its customers. To my mind, the jury is still out on exactly how Apple intends to use its phones' flexibility.

I think it's an appliance in the same way that my PS3 is an appliance. There is a computer under the covers and the device is quite general purpose, but in the end its an appliance because I don't have the freedom to tinker.

I think "computer with massively reduced user freedom" could be part of a decent definition of appliance.

I think it's an appliance in the same way that my PS3 is an appliance. There is a computer under the covers and the device is quite general purpose, but in the end its an appliance because I don't have the freedom to tinker.

I think "computer with massively reduced user freedom" could be part of a decent definition of appliance.

I am getting sick of the game console comparisons. People are NOT replacing real computers with gaming consoles, but there's an increasing push(especially by Apple fanboys) that the iDevices are the future of computing.

I agree with you 100%. As a software developer I love it that Apple has popularized the slate format computer. More computers being sold equals more opportunities for me as a developer. I don't particularly like Apple's policies and that's why I'm bullish on Android and WebOS tablets.

I've quite shocked that Microsoft is having so much trouble in this space. They were almost there with pen computing but for some reason were never able to make the jump to touch computing.

In a recent blog entry, Russel Beattie [russellbeattie.com] did a pretty good job of explaining why WIMP (windows, icons, mouse, and pointer) doesn't work on a tablet.

The iPhone has done more to liberate consumers in the mobile market than any phone before or since. It's not perfect, but the mobile landscape was radically different 3 years ago and much has changed for the better because of the iPhone's release. In fact it was so good that Google, RIM, Windows, etc. jumped on the bandwagon and decided to copy it.

Err Windows Mobile, Blackberry etc. never had restrictions on app developers. But now WP7 is going to have the same restrictions by following in Apple's footsteps. If anything, the iPhone has actually made it worse for the mobile market by your own logic.

Apple doesn't, in any actual fact, dominate how I use my iPhone, you know. On my un-jailbroken device there are no restrictions on which Web sites I can visit; the built-in Mail app allows the use of any IMAP/POP/Exchange account; the Phone app allows me to call anyone; the SMS app allows me to send any text to anyone. As a communications tool my use of the iPhone is dominated by those I choose to communicate with, really. And if I want to write software for my own iPhone, I can do so without encountering the App Store approval process (ad-hoc distribution).

You're talking about developer freedom, and it's true that developers are heavily restricted on the iPhone (ad-hoc distribution is limited to 100 users). It's not really clear that this "sucks" for users though. For one thing, people have seemed satisfied with devices and services that are completely closed (cable/satellite TV, effectively) as well as platforms that are way more restrictive than Apple's (like all video game consoles from 1985 to the present).

Let's step back a second. Beyond command-line junkies like you and I, the 1995-2005 period in computing history was dominated by two factors: the massive rise of computing in general, and the massive gap between potential of software and the end-user reality. Everyone here knows that software, with its incredible theoretical flexibility, can do so many things -- yet actual end-users seem to use their computers as little more than sophisticated typewriters! If you weren't frustrated by the state of end-user computing in 2005 you never watched someone who doesn't read Slashdot try to perform any task outside the "box" of MS Office.

Apple has seized on a particular paradigm of human-computer interaction designed to address this gap, and I think it has been successful. End-users on the iPhone/iPad are much more comfortable than PC users in making use of a diverse array of applications. Yes, these apps are all approved by Apple, but I personally believe that part of the reason users are comfortable with the App Store is the simple fact that downloading apps will not, generally speaking, trash their device, take it over, or do something unexpected. Compare this to the open PC where you have huge amounts of malware and where even legitimate applications act in anti-user ways (like Sun's JVM which tries to install the Yahoo! toolbar). No surprise that other mobile platforms have introduced app stores of their own.

In this environment claiming that Apple "dominates" usage of iOS or that the experience simply "sucks" doesn't seem that sophisticated to me.

Can you play files encoded with WebM on your phone? No, because Jobs doesn't want you to. Can you run the native version of Google Voice? Nah. REJECTED.

Just because you are in denial of the control that Apple has on the iPhone doesn't mean that there is no control or domination. It's probably more akin to some kind of Stockholm syndrome.

Please, let's not claim that either of us is addled by some psychiatric disease -- I think that's a weak argument. I'm not in denial of the "control". I just don't think the actual control exercised matters as much to end-users as it does to you.

I don't use much video on my phone, but I think what's important is that neither the content, nor the providers of video is restricted -- note the Netflix app among many others. Why is the format the most important thing? Video decoding is still a pretty intensive activity, likely to require hardware acceleration, so in a practical sense the video formats on a portable device are going to be limited regardless.

Err, no one is asking to abolish the App store. Just that there is a button somewhere deep down hidden which can activate software installs bypassing the App store. You can still have all the benefits you listed in this scenario.

It's not going to be a "deep down hidden" setting when Google/Sun/Microsoft do whatever they can to get people to set it, so that they can cover up your app launcher with the Google Toolbar, and replace your media player with Windows Media Player, etc. You're back to the Windows PC scenario where a user wants to watch some video of a skateboarding dog and ends up replacing their Web browser.

If you live in a world without people who have useless System Tray icons a mile long, consider yourself lucky. But please don't pretend that world doesn't exist, or that it isn't a problem.

"it's not like people that buy them are unaware of the limitations at time of purchase."
I am not so sure that is really true, at least if the sort of people I interact with IRL are any indication. They are certainly aware that there are limitations, and some even have a vague notion that those limitations are deliberately imposed by Apple, but very few people seem to be aware of the full extent of what Apple is doing. Most people seem to have either forgotten or completely missed the news about political cartoon apps being blocked, or the Ulysses app, or the apparently arbitrary nature of what Apple decides to reject. It is even worse with the iPad: people have become conditioned to having their cell phones restricted and sabotaged, but the idea that Apple would ever try to do such a thing to a tablet computer seems to be lost on the average consumer.

I'm not so sure you understand the general public. They don't care. They really don't. They've never once thought "I need to SSH into my box at home to...", or "If only this API were allowed". They read about the things they CAN do and go "cool!" and then they buy it. They hear about some artist that they don't care at all about being censored - and they don't care. They hear about some app they don't care about not being approved - and they don't care. They hear about some app they think would be cool not getting approved - and they're sad for 10 seconds, but they realize they didn't lose anything other than the possibility of an app, which may still become actual, and they move on to caring about things that actually affect their lives in a meaningful way - i.e. not a cell phone or tablet computer manufacturers policies.

I understand your point of view, but I look at it like this: soft comfy handcuffs are still handcuffs. It's better to complain about them or avoid them right up front, instead of waiting until they stop you personally from doing something you want to do. Think back to the famous "First they came for the trade unionists..." .

You are not the entire world, first of all, and secondly, Apple is not just rejecting features, they are rejecting political cartoons and pornography from the apps store. People keep saying that HTML is the answer to that, but the apps store simply out-competes the web and HTML solutions are at an inherent disadvantage.

"Choosing one that has a unified and controlled app distribution system because it offers an excellent end user experience is def

Never heard of either of these 'apps' until they hit/. I suspect that's true for the vast majority of users. Trying to re-brand the iPad as a 'tablet computer' when it is not, doesn't help your case. It was never presented as a full blown computer as it has obvious ties with the iPhone/iPod Touch line given it uses the same OS.

I agree with the poster below. Regular people just don't care. The iPhone is a solid performer and does just about anything a regular user needs. I think the oddly emotional response

If anything gets covered to a higher-than-average degree, it's Google and Google products, and even that's not by much. It's just a lazy, mindless meme from Apple-haters to claim Apple gets more coverage, because they are apparently unable to use their mouse to manipulate the scrollbar and move past the big ol' Apple story on the front page that they hate so much.

I'm not sure what a random selected news feed is meant to prove. That it's not involved in the majorities of stories on Slashdot? That's fair enough.

The problem is that it's activities are still reported to a degree grossly disproportionate to their marketshare in many given sectors, and also despite the fact that other companies news simply does not get reported. Case in point, what percentage of Android, Symbian, or Blackberry handsets have had news stories posted on Slashdot on release in relation to the

"He was doing the typical "Apple is a big bad poo poo head" thing that is all the rage."

No, actually, I was pointing out the fact that Apple has put deliberate restrictions into the software, which they could at any time remove, but which they do not. You are making it seem as if there is no valid criticism of Apple's tactics with the iPhone/iPad.

"They're now an evil corporation and thus everything they do is to be reviled."

First of all, people were speaking out against Apple's proprietary software a long time before the iPhone. We criticized their approach to iTunes, which they did eventually change, back when they were still the "underdog." We criticized their harsh and heavy handed approach to journalists. They were criticized for pushing proprietary software on their Macintosh line before Slashdot even existed. The fact that Apple is now a major force in technology only means that when they pull something like this -- the "walled garden" approach -- it is that much worse, since it has a much broader effect.

"The problem some of us have is that there are times that Apple needs to be called out for stupid shit because, as with every single company out there, they aren't perfect and they fuck up from time to time but they really don't need to be called out Every. Gawddamn. Time."

Yes, they do need to be called out every time, when they are pulling the same thing over and over. Otherwise, they could just sit around ignoring critics until everyone forgets that there was ever a time before walled gardens. We did not stop criticizing Microsoft, so why should Apple be spared?

I've had my 3G for 2 years, but there have only been a handful of times when I would have liked multitasking, mostly for switching between a webpage and something else (like SMS). When I use my phone, I'm often playing a game that I want to focus on.

Outside of Skype and last.fm type things, has this been a big frustration for many iPhone owners?

I'll be glad to get the feature when I get a iPhone 4, but it hasn't been a deal breaker by any means.

Bang on-- the only reliable example of people really missing it are Pandora. Or, possibly, GPS turn directions? Basically, audio-only stuff, which brings us to an interesting point, with both iPhone and iPad, YOU'RE not really a multitasking device either -- it's nice how these devices don't try to divide your attention, and running a new app is a bit like running a new, more specialized device.

That said -- 90s era Palm had better culture of "resuming right where you left off" apps, but now maybe iOS gets that back... and I think I might start liking that bottom of screen app bouncing the same way I like alt-tab in Windows...

While I obviously can't speak for everyone, here are some actual statistics regarding hardware usage for one of my apps compatible with iPhone OS 3.1 and higher:

Apple iPhone 3GS: 51.3%

Apple iPhone 3G: 24.1%

Apple iPhone 1G: 5.9%

Apple iPod Touch 2G: 5.6%

Apple iPad: 3.4%

Apple iPod Touch 3G: 2.0%

Apple iPhone: 0.4%

Apple iPod Touch 1G: < 0.1%

Apple iPod Touch: < 0.1%

7.2% were simulator usage. The app used here is a paid business app, with not-very-exciting sales figures. Still, I would think that the hardware distribution would be meaningful. If so, it would indicate that one could profitably ignore the first generation iPhone.

No, the iPhone suffers from this old-hardware-becomes-obsolete thing that the IT industry has lived with since forever. You buy a computing device, it will become obsolete some time. I'm sure there will be things that iOS6 can do that the iPhone4 can't do, and it probably won't even run iOS7 at all.

I've been checking for the update periodically all morning. I'm definitely looking forward to it, but not looking forward to their servers getting overloaded. Probably I should just forget about it and try to update tomorrow or Wednesday.

I'm not entirely sure why they didn't release it for the 1st Gen iPhone & iPod Touch, does the OS take advantage of hardware not present on those? I'm hoping that my 1st Gen iPod Touch isn't rendered obsolete by this update. I know when iPhone OS 3 came out, there was a big push that all apps needed to be OS 3 tested, I wonder when the same will be required for iOS 4?

Required to be tested against iOS 4 isn't the same as requiring iOS 4. You can still build against the 3.0 SDK if you want to support older devices, you just need to make sure it doesn't break when running on iOS 4 too. You can still build against 2.X if you really want to, but it needs to not crash on 4.0.

Why has Apple created a disparity between its two newest products, released only a couple of months apart? The iPhone 4 will have twice as much ram as the iPad, a better screen and now a newer OS - why is the iPad looking like the second rate child here?

Don't get me wrong, I have an iPad and I love it, but I am baffled as to why Apple once again puts noses out of shape by making such an obvious difference in spec between the two products. Its almost as tho the iPad is the last of the previous generatio

The iPad's specs are better then any currently available iPhone or iPod touch, so I'm not sure what you're saying. Should Apple have released a less capable iPhone 4? If you're asking why they aren't releasing iOS 4 for the iPad today, yeah that's a decent question. I have to presume they'd have liked to have had iOS 4 out for the iPad today too, but for reasons unknown they aren't going to be able to do that today.

The iPad's specs are better then any currently available iPhone or iPod touch, so I'm not sure what you're saying. Should Apple have released a less capable iPhone 4? If you're asking why they aren't releasing iOS 4 for the iPad today, yeah that's a decent question.

The iPad was first released a little over two months ago, while the iPhone 3GS was released a year ago - the iPhone 4 will be with us in the next few days.

With that in mind, the iPad has the same amount of ram and the same quality screen as the previous generation of iPhone and iPod Touch, despite being released ten months later, and only two or so months before the new iPhone version. Why?

The screen I could live without, but doubling the ram would have been extremely handy - there have already been sugges

The iPad will get the iOS4 upgrade later this year. The development of the iPhone OS was running in parallel for the two platforms, and will now be rolled together when both are up to date with the iOS 4 upgrade. Presumably it's not quite ready on the iPad yet.

It does look kind of neat but I have all kinds of goodies on a jailbroke touch. I don't think I am going to upgrade to iOS 4 until someone comes up with a jailbreak. The goodies from Cydia repos are worth more than just a few extras that I really don't need.

So the iPad won't be running iOS 4 right away.... Apple is really running the risk of having a very segmented market a la Android, but they are doing it without any of Androids advantages. For instance even though it was only released two months ago the iPad only has half the amount of RAM that the iPhone 4 has and a lot fewer sensors. This means that there will be a large group of applications that will run on the iPhone 4 but will not run on the iPad which will wind up frustrating users to no end. While I realize that technology advances with time, there was no rational reason for Apple to upgrade hardware, but when you release devices within 2 months of each other that vary so wildly, you are doing something wrong.

And while this problem is unlikely to affect them in the near term, in the long term users are going to become as frustrated with the segmentation of the iOS market as they were/are with the segmentation in other cell phone environments. The EXACT same segmentation that Steve decried when first announcing the iPhone/iPod touch SDK.

So the iPad won't be running iOS 4 right away.... Apple is really running the risk of having a very segmented market a la Android, but they are doing it without any of Androids advantages. For instance even though it was only released two months ago the iPad only has half the amount of RAM that the iPhone 4 has and a lot fewer sensors.

The iPad has the same amount of RAM that the very latest phone (the 3Gs) offers. And the same number of sensors (minus the camera, which is not exactly a "sensor"). Only the very latest phone, which initially will have a fraction of the 3G/3Gs owner numbers has one more sensor - a gyroscope, which mostly refines what you can do with the accelerometer.

So where is the fractioning? Most developers will still be targeting iOS3.1 as a base for a while, with support for some iOS4 features for at least a half year or so - time enough for the iPad to gain the update. In fact that point will probably be the trigger where developers could realistically move to iOS4 alone, since by then most people will have upgraded (including Touch owners since finally Touch updates are free).

And while this problem is unlikely to affect them in the near term, in the long term users are going to become as frustrated with the segmentation of the iOS market

In the "long term" there's iOS4, since the iPad and iPhone will both be running it - yes you can't have iOS4 on the original iPhone 1st gen, but at this point that is a fraction of the devices on the market.

Apple has done a good job thinking around the fragmentation problem, including how to handle iPhones with different resolutions...

Can't wait to see all the neat new stuff that won't run on my stale phone.

I bought an original base (4 GB) iPhone a couple months after it came out--refurbished, $249. When the 3G came out I sold my original one on eBay for right about what I paid for it*, plus or minus a few bucks (I forget exactly, and I had a case but lost the headphones, etc.) and bought a base (8 GB) 3G. When the 3GS came out I sold my $199 3G for $305 and got I a base (16 GB) 3GS--I just had to wait a couple months for an anniversary to roll around and then the upgrade price dropped from $399 to the regular $199. Now, for some reason, AT&T is telling me I can upgrade to an iPhone 4 for good old $199 [tuaw.com] so I'm just gonna wait a few weeks--a) for them to become available again and b) because I never buy new stuff right away.

So basically, I paid $249 three years ago and for that, I've gotten an annual free upgrade to a faster phone with more features and double the storage every time (this is the first year that won't happen) and, as a nice bonus, my phone has never been out of warranty. You'd think someone who runs a tech [slashdot.org] site might be aware of all this.

* vendor lock-in is usually evil but it has treated me very well.:-) Due to Apple's exclusive deal with AT&T, people who want iPhones but are on other networks pay quite a bit for used ones.

That "$249" fails to include what AT&T soaks you for as part of their normal monthly charges.

And that line of thinking ignores the fact that people with an iPhone would have a phone bill anyway, and that now the iPhone is actually one of the cheapest data plans if you opt for the low-end plan and use WiFi at home/work.

I have an iPhone 3G. It can make use of some of the newest features in iOS 4 but cannot support multitasking (among others). I will not be upgrading my iPhone.

There are always going to be "bleeding edge early adopters". They serve a purpose: they allow those of us who are more patient to see how well/poorly something new works. I expect glitches and other problems for those upgrading... but nothing too drastic. If they want to jump in with both feet I say "let them".

As far as I'm concerned, there is one and only one Correct Way(TM) to write a date or date/time. It is:

2010-06-21 15:37:21 (Which is the exact date and time in UTC that I typed that.)

You go from most general (year) to most specific (seconds). Always write times in 24-hour format, and always include leading zeroes. Why is that the Correct Way(TM)? Because when you ASCII-alphabetize a list of such dates and times, they will sort into the correct chronological order.

I guess the 21/6 rationale is that some people call it "the twenty-first of June." Those people are wrong. It is "June twenty-first," or if you prefer, "June twenty-one." Do those people call the time "the thirty-seventh of three p.m."? I think not.

If you really want to get fancy, you can use alternative separators. 2010.06.21 15:37:21 is fine. Or if you're into saving space (like in a script or program), just 20100621153721 works, too. The Oracle format for that is 'YYYY-MM-DD HH24:MI:SS'. I use the same format for storing dates in MySQL and SQLite. Whenever I write a timestamp to a log file, I use that format so that the GNU sort command works on it. Whenever I name a file with a date in it, I use the format so that sane operating systems that sort files by name will also sort it chronologically. When I put dates/datetimes in something like Excel, I also use the format in case someone ever exports the file to a text file or to a CSV or something.

I really, really do wish that everyone would stop using all other crazy date/datetime formats.

It kind of reminds me of how, I can't remember who it was, but one of the early developers of protocols said that he regretted making hostnames things like mail.google.com. It really should have been com.google.mail. Think about it; it looks weird now, but if that were the way it worked and you had a ginormous list of FQDNs and sorted it, all your top-level domains would collate together, followed by all of your company names collating together. com.google.docs, com.google.mail, com,google.maps, com.google.www would all be together, instead of mail.google.com, mail.yahoo.com, mail.whatever.com all globbing up. It would also really make it hard for phishers who use URL munging to mislead people.

1: A notification system that doesn't use annoying modal popups
2: Speech-to-text into all fields
(*note* I refrained from mentioning the AT&T lock-in, but we all know it's an issue)

How about "wireless sync"? Can someone tell me why a wireless device has to be plugged in to sync a damn MP3 file? I have no less than 6 apps on my iPhone that do some form of wireless sync with my PC, but the core phone features dont' support it. I'm sure we know the reason: "Steve doesn't like it", but what I want to know is WHY??